Certain European songbirds, particularly the Great Tit, demonstrate a form of seasonal divorce after their breeding period. Research shows that these birds separate at the conclusion of their breeding season, while some pairs continue to bond until spring. Observations revealed that individuals tracked in the woods show varying degrees of social association post-breeding. Some pairs consistently visited feeders together, while others started to drift apart, indicating different social behaviors beyond just human experiences.
"I think more and more we are really understanding the extent to which social behavior influences animals' lives," says Adelaide Abraham, a PhD student at the University of Oxford and first author of the study. "It's hugely, hugely important."
To find out, Abraham and her colleagues used little radio tags to track individual birds in the woods near Oxford. The tags would ping when the birds visited feeders set up by the researchers throughout the woods.
In the spring, the little birds couple up to make babies. The male feeds his female partner as she incubates the eggs, and once the chicks are hatched, both of the parents help feed the chicks.
Some couples seemed to start drifting apart. The researchers described the pairs as 'divorcing' in a paper published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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